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Getting It In and Out With OS XBy Francine Schwieder |
The last two sound articles dealt with getting sound into and out of a Mac running OS 9 and earlier. This time we're going to deal with OS X. As mentioned before you will have to buy both a piece of hardware, Griffin's iMic is cheap ($35) and works fine, and some sort of recording software. I bought Sound Studio, by Lucius Kwok. You can download it from Felt Tip Software. There is a 14 day trial version available. If you decide to buy it the price is $50. It's worked fine for me.
Plug your iMic into one of your Mac's USB ports. If your audio source has RCA out ports (as mine do) you will need a cord with RCA jacks on one end and a standard 1/8" stereo jack on the other. Connect your audio source to your new iMic with this cord. If you are going to record from a microphone (or even if you aren't, just to be on the safe side) go to the System Preferences-->Speech panel, click on the tab for Speech Recognition, and make sure the last item for Microphone shows iMic USB audio system. Close System Preferences.
Launch Sound Studio. You should see two windows, a large window where the waves of what you record will appear, and a small Input Levels window. If you don't, go to Sound Studio Preferences and click the button for "New Window at startup" and in the menu bar go to the Window menu and select Show Input Levels. Check the button in this window for "Soft play-thru" (which actually means the Software will play the music as you are setting things up and recording). If you don't hear any sound when you play your audio source you may need to unplug the iMic and replug it, then go to the Sound Studio menu item Audio-->Sound Input/Output Setup and choose the iMic as the input device. Sometimes I have to unplug/replug the iMic to get it recognized, sometimes I don't.
Start your audio source going and watch the Input Levels window. You will see a meter bar that at the lower levels is green, as the source gets louder it goes to yellow, and at the loudest level turns red, and may hit the end of the meter bar. If it does this, and stays there, you will need to adjust the sliders to bring down the levels, or clipping will occur and your sound file will be too loud and distorted as well. Drag the slider tabs in the Input Levels until most of the sound is in the green, with some peaks in the yellow. An occasional really loud excursion into the red is probably OK. If you've dragged the sliders down as far as they'll go and it is still coming in too loud try flipping the switch on the iMic (between the Input and Output plugs) to the other side. If this doesn't help you may need to get another type of input device that will allow you to adjust the output before it gets to the iMic. Many amps and tape decks have a headphone jack with a volume adjustment. If yours does, get a cable that will hook the headphone jack to the iMic jack and use that.
Now start your audio source going and click the Record button in the main Sound Studio window. Nothing will happen in that window until you click Stop, whereupon Sound Studio will draw the waveform of your file. When your tape or record has finished playing hit the Stop button and wait for the wave form to appear. If your lead in or out has too long a period with no sound you can place your cursor in the window, drag to select the totally flat and soundless section, then hit the delete key to remove it. If you want to add a Fade In or Fade Out effect you will drag to select the appropriate section of your sound file, then go to the menu bar and select Filter-->Fade In (or Out). The program will do so. Next you'll want to optimize the quality of the sound.
First go to Edit-->Select All. Now go to Filter-->DC Offset. I leave it set at Automatic, because I really have only the foggiest idea what this does. Even for a rather large file, e.g. a 45 minute audio tape, Sound Studio will take only a few minutes to accomplish this operation. If you wish you can apply Equalizer settings to the file. Sound Studio has 3 band, 10 band and 30 band Graphic Equalizers for you to use. You can create custom settings. For vocal music I've created my own settings which optimize the "hearability" of the voice. To use go to Filter-->Graphic EQ-->10-Band EQ... (or whichever one you wish), then either pick one of the presets or make your own custom settings. If you do choose to use it be prepared to wait. If you have a file that takes 30 minutes to play, it will take at least 30 minutes to apply the filter. The last step is go to the Filter menu and select Normalize. I set that to about 96% by dragging the slider. If you prefer to type you can enter a value of about -0.3 dB in the appropriate box. This filter takes a bit longer than DC Offset, but not nearly as long as the Equalizer.
Sound Studio will neither save nor open MP3 files, so save your file in AIFF format, which iTunes can read. iTunes will also convert the file to MP3 if you want it in this format. If you wish to edit an MP3 file with Sound Studio, go to File-->Import with QuickTime and select the file you want. You can edit to your heart's content, then save as an AIFF file and have iTunes change it back to an MP3 file. So what's wrong with leaving things as AIFF files? Nothing except file size. A song which lasts 2 minutes and 18 seconds is 23.2MBs in AIFF format, and 2.6MBs as an MP3. The Christmans Divertimento article tells how to use iTunes1.1 to make CDs.